Hannah Arendt and the response to victimization of international crimes

• In Event: Victim Rights, Victim Values

Abstract

The situation of victims of international crimes spotlights a number of issues with the justice response to crime and victimization: the definition of the harm done to victims as primarily a civil law matter; the narrowing of the questions raised by crime to those of guilt and responsibility; the cloaking of the role of revenge and the obfuscation of the nature of crime as a public wrong. This paper will argue that the work of Hannah Arendt can be marshalled to address these issues: this includes a novel way of understanding the difference between countering injustice and doing justice, including an understanding of the fundamentally political nature of experiencing injustice, the importance of modelling the justice response on Arendt’s distinction between determinate and reflective judgement, and the adoption of key concepts - like her notion of natality and the political sphere from The Human Condition – to reconsider the meaning of the outcome of justice process in the aftermath of international crimes.

Author

• Antony Pemberton, Katholieke Universiteit of Leuven (KU Leuven)